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Effective Management Of Field Technicians: Strategies And Tools
For field service businesses, the ability to manage their field technicians and engineers is an integral part of operating in the most efficient way possible. Without proper management, you'll find your quality of service drops, your customers are less satisfied with your services, and your overall efficiency drops.
Regardless of the nature of work or the industry your business operates in, the problems that arise from poor management of field technicians can be detrimental. Drawing from our extensive 20+ years of experience working with field service businesses, we've compiled the most effective strategies and tools. These are not just theoretical concepts, but practical solutions that can help you manage and streamline your field operations, enhance your operational productivity, and steer clear of the pitfalls of poor management.
Critical Strategies for Managing Field Technicians
Implementing a Robust Scheduling System
One of the most significant blockages for efficient field team management happens when jobs are scheduled and assigned to technicians. More often than not, job assignments are given to whoever is available with no concern about overall capacity and how it will affect other jobs that need to be completed. This leads to blockages, as field technicians must travel further to get jobs completed, which reduces the total number of jobs that can be completed in a day. Similarly, a lack of ability to see which technicians have the right qualifications or skill sets to complete necessary jobs can lead to a backlog of tasks.
Adopting software that offers dynamic technician assignments through features like geo-locations and vehicle tracking can revolutionize your operations. This can significantly reduce travel and response times, leading to more jobs being completed in a day. A scheduling tool that allows you to match jobs with the skillsets of your technicians, complete with a database of qualifications and certificates for easy filtering, can streamline the assignment process. This not only minimizes travel time but also ensures that the right person is assigned to the right job, enhancing operational efficiency.
Make communications simple through automation
Poor communication between the back office and the field team, as well as with customers, can cause enormous problems for field service businesses. When technicians aren't easy to reach or can't access the information they need for a job, it can slow down the time it takes to respond to and complete assigned jobs.
To make communications easy, you need to use mobile apps that automatically alert your field team when a job is assigned and allow them to access information about asset history, stock levels, and job details while in the field. Similarly, you need to be able to provide easy ways to communicate with customers about their job status. Otherwise, you risk your back office and field teams' time being well-spent dealing with complaints. One of the best ways to enable this is through customer portals, which will allow the customer to see the status of their jobs and give them real-time information about when the technician is on their way.
Understand what your field team is doing through reporting and analytics
With easy-to-understand data, you can identify areas of your field team's performance that need improvement. To get this information, you need to have both reporting software connected to your job management software and a means to collect customer feedback about your field team's performance.
Customer feedback can be gathered using customer portals or reviews, while reporting often requires software to present the data meaningfully. This can seem unnecessary, but it's one of the easiest ways to track metrics such as travel time, job duration, and metrics like technician idle time. With this data, you can make data-driven decisions that will help you continually refine your field team management.
What's the best way to implement all this?
The most practical and effective way to implement these actions is by utilising a functioning field service management software. With FSM software, you can seamlessly handle every aspect of a job's life cycle, freeing up your time for tasks that drive value rather than wasting it on operational administration. FSM software also comes equipped with a customer portal and reporting dashboards, giving you easy access to the information you need to make field technician management a breeze and improve performance.